Pela Revolução Permanente no Irã, Oriente Médio e Norte da África!

Solidariedade com o levante iraniano!

(1) O novo levante no Irã é de importância histórico-mundial. Isso prova que as massas estão prontas e dispostas a lutar para derrubar o capitalismo em sua agonia. Os trabalhadores iranianos e os agricultores pobres se recusam a pagar pela crise terminal do capitalismo global com as suas vidas e os seus padrões de vida. Marxistas entendem que este levante está atrasado e só pode terminar em revolução socialista ou bárbara contra-revolução. Mas não estamos sozinhos nessa perspectiva histórica. Um homem iraniano, envelhecido 111 anos, fala de ter nascido no Irã (então Pérsia) na época nos primeiros passos para a revolução burguesa que ocorreu em 1906. Ele disse “Eu sabia que esse dia chegaria, eu fiquei vivo para ele”. Ele viveu toda a época do imperialismo no Irã durante a qual seu desenvolvimento nacional foi retido pela rivalidade das grandes potências, auxiliado por seus agentes burgueses nacionais, e a traiçoeira pequeno burguesia ‘democrática’ da esquerda, na disputa pelo controle da Eurásia como chave para dominar o mundo. 

(2) Quando Lenin escreveu “O imperialismo; A fase superior do capitalismo”em 1915, o lugar do Irã no capitalismo global já era de subordinação ao imperialismo. Lenin definiu imperialismo como um sistema em que os países imperialistas opressores dominam países coloniais oprimidos. No entanto, um punhado de países eram ‘transitórios’ os quais incluiu Pérsia, China e Turquia. Ele chamou esses países de semi-colônias :

” ..países que, formalmente, politicamente eram independentes, mas que são, na verdade, enredados na rede de dependência financeira e diplomática”.
Assim como a revolução russa provou a teoria / programa da Revolução Permanente ser correta, o fez o desenvolvimento futuro do Irã. A reforma constitucional de 1906 limitou os poderes do Shah mas não conseguiu escapar da “rede de dependência financeira e diplomática” sem se libertar da rivalidade imperialista britânica, alemã e russa para o controle do petróleo persa. A revolução nacional do Irã nunca foi concluída porque ela foi presa na garra do imperialismo na I Guerra mundial que tentava a redivisão do mundo em face do levante revolucionário internacional. O tratado russo-persa de 1921 protegia a revolução soviética de incursões do exército branco ao sul, enquanto garantia os direitos de transporte no Mar Cáspio para a Pérsia. Tal foi a re-divisão do mundo que eliminou o imperialismo russo da cena, substituindo-o pelo poder da União Soviética até o acordo de Stalin com o bloco anglo-americano durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

(3) o Irã aproveitou a redivisão pós Segunda Guerra Mundial e a onda de descolonização, mas como a maioria das colônias ficou aquém de completar a revolução nacional democrática (burguesa). Que sucedeu apenas na China, onde os capitalistas recusaram a oferta para compartilhar o poder com o maoísta PC chinês e fugiu para Taiwan, e tardiamente em Cuba onde os EUA se recusou a compartilhar o poder forçando os castristas ir para os braços da stalinista URSS. Em 1951 a Frente Nacional de Mossadegh, comprometida com a nacionalização do petróleo, ganhou uma maioria parlamentar e derrubou o poder absoluto da monarquia constitucional, mas não conseguiu percorrer todo o caminho para derrotar a burguesia nacional numa revolução socialista. O resultado foi um populista governo burguês anti-imperialista que nacionalizou a indústria do petróleo. Contudo, para o movimento popular dos trabalhadores e agricultores pobres faltava um revolucionário partido bolchevique-leninista capaz de romper a frente popular. Mossadegh tentou negociar com os imperialistas, enquanto eles impunham sanções na produção e comércio, bem como um bloqueio naval. Agentes americanos e britânicos criaram divisões entre os apoiadores de Mossadegh e em 1953 eles conspiraram para realizar um golpe para restaurar sua propriedade e controle de petróleo iraniano e para restaurar Reza Xá Pahlavi como monarca constitucional.

Inicialmente, a tentativa de golpe fracassou, com a Frente Nacional e o (Partido Comunista) Tudeh indo às ruas e o Xá fugindo para os EUA. Os EUA e a Grã-Bretanha planejou uma segunda tentativa. Desta vez o golpe sucedeu, principalmente porque Mossadegh desmobilizou seu apoio de massas e o partido stalinista Tudeh aquietou-se complacente pela frente popular aparentemente vitoriosa que incluiu seu movimento islâmico rival pressagiando o seu papel reacionário em 1979. Perdendo o apoio no parlamento, Mossadegh, em seguida, fizeram um referendo para dissolver o parlamento e tirar do Xá seus poderes remanescentes; um golpe constitucional da esquerda que o fez perder mais apoio. Prenunciando Allende no Chile em 1973, Mossadegh não mobilizou seus apoiadores nem os chamou recorrer às armas. Tudo o que era necessário então era neutralizar Tudeh, infiltrando provocadores no partido para provocar uma “insurreição comunista”, perdendo a Mossadegh mais apoio e, finalmente, instigando os oficiais pro-Xá sob o general Zahidi para prendê-lo e assumir o controle do governo.

(4) Resumimos nossa posição sobre a revolução anti-imperialista de 1979 e da contra-revolução pela burguesia islâmica do bazaar:
“A tragédia da revolução de 1979 mostrou que o Irã estava maduro para a revolução, mas não tinha uma direção revolucionária. Os operários e camponeses pobres foram a força por trás da revolução anti-Xá, mas foram conduzidos por liberais e stalinistas que aliados com a burguesia nacional islâmica que em 1981 tinha ligado os trabalhadores mais avançados e exterminados muitos milhares dos melhores militantes. O fracasso da revolução socialista pode ser claramente atribuído ao papel do partido stalinista Tudeh, que seguiu a fatalista linha stalinista de fazer uma revolução democrática em aliança com a burguesia ‘progressista’ para expulsar os imperialistas. Os stalinistas se recusam a aprender com a sua traição da revolução na China em 1927, quando seu ‘aliado” e membro honorário da Comintern, Chiang Kai Shek, cooptou o Partido Comunista e massacrou sua liderança.

Novamente, isto serve para demonstrar que a menos que os trabalhadores liderem os camponeses pobres à revolução, a burguesia nacional reacionária usará sua liderança na frente popular anti-imperialista para cooptar os trabalhadores e oprimidos e esmagar a revolução socialista. As lições de Outubro ainda não foram aprendidas. Os stalinistas, guevaristas, trotskistas renegados e Mudjadaheen (maoístas) depositam sua confiança na democracia burguesa, em vez dos revolucionários operários e camponeses pobres. Mais uma vez, os trabalhadores e os camponeses pobres se levantam, mas falta um partido marxista revolucionário e eles são derrotados pela burguesia reacionária, servindo direta ou indiretamente os interesses de uma ou outra potência imperialista.


(5) A República Islâmica e sua ditadura de quase 40 anos e a episódica resistência a ela, chega até sua situação atual como parte do bloco Rússia-China, indo para a guerra no Oriente Médio para repartição do Iraque ao Líbano. Ele está tentando resolver sua crise semi-colonial à custa das semi colônias menores e os povo trabalhador do Oriente Médio e do Irã. Pelo menos duas vezes até agora, após a negociação Astana e de Sochi, o mundo foi girado um conto de um acordo sírio. Tudo o que foi resolvido, a partir do ponto de vista dos governantes iranianos, é que a Síria vai ter que pagar pela intervenção em apoio à Assad! E enquanto isso, a política expansionista contínua introduzindo às massas iraquianas, sírias e iemenitas os “voluntários” da temida Guarda Revolucionária Iraniana. Estes não só reprimem e roubam tudo à vista em áreas “liberadas”, mas têm seus dedos em todo tipo de empreendimentos econômicos onde quer que estejam, tudo com a benção dos teocratas.
Como resultado (como um cartoon no Facebook coloca) o Irã está bombeando capital e  mercenários para o Iraque, Síria e Iêmen em um papel de subordinado à Rússia e a China, remendando suas pontes com a Turquia e Qatar, e matando de fome seus próprios trabalhadores e camponeses. Assim, os determinantes da revolta é uma história de desenvolvimento desigual e combinado semi-colonial em face a uma crise mundial que cria todas as condições objetivas para a revolução, mas que ainda não tem a condição subjetiva vital de um partido revolucionário bolchevique-leninista. Com apenas duas alternativas, em última análise, as massas iranianas devem encontrar o caminho para leninismo para ser capaz de realizar a sua revolução, porque a única outra alternativa é a pior reação que eles presenciaram até agora.

 Como a luta está se desenvolvendo e os dois blocos imperialistas 

(6) Lemos que noventa por cento dos iranianos estão se alimentando com o equivalente a cupões de alimentos, e que estes estão programados para serem cortados. Onde 27% do Produto Interno Bruto foi dedicado ao bem-estar social e um piso básico semelhante ao Bolsa  Família brasileiro,em 2008, um estudo do Banco Mundial agora mostra como isso foi “reformado” para baixo a 3% hoje. O desemprego dos jovens é enorme, a inflação de dois dígitos tornou-se um elemento permanente e o salário mínimo do governo é ⅓ da ‘renda mínima necessária’ oficial para uma família de três membros. Esta condição prevalece como resultado dos custos de guerras dos teocratas que ocorrem durante uma crise global do capitalismo e, especialmente, desde que o Irã tem apoiado a contra-revolução de Assad com tanto sangue e dinheiro. Um aumento no investimento internacional deveria resultar em melhores condições de vida, assim como a reeleição de Rouhani, que a imprensa ocidental chama de “moderado”. Mas, enquanto os ganhos nas ações foram vendidos, nada melhorou nas ruas. No mês passado, os preços da gasolina dobrou. Onde Alemanha e Espanha foram os grandes investidores após os protestos de 2009 (pela fraude nos resultados das eleições), hoje o dinheiro inunda a partir da China : 
“A China está financiando bilhões de dólares em projetos chineses no Irã, fazendo incursões profundas na economia, enquanto concorrentes europeus lutam para encontrar bancos dispostos a financiar as suas ambições, disseram autoridades do governo e indústria iranianas… o financiamento chinês, de longe o maior declarante de intenções de investimento do que qualquer outro país no Irã, está em contraste gritante com a seca dos investidores ocidentais desde que o presidente dos EUA, Donald Trump rejeitou o pacto de 2015 acordado pelas grandes potências, aumentando a ameaça de que as sanções poderiam ser re-impostas.”


Autoridades iranianas dizem que as ofertas são parte de US $ 124 bilhões da Nova Rota da Seda, iniciativa de Pequim que visa construir nova infra-estrutura – de rodovias e ferrovias a portos e usinas de energia -entre a China e Europa para pavimentar o caminho para uma expansão do comércio”

As revolta das massas é geral e não restrita às grandes cidades. A alegação do governo feita pelo britânico “Guardian” de que as manifestações tenham acabado é espúria. A revolta combina demandas econômicas e políticas e apela à expulsão dos teocratas e o grande aiatolá Khamenei são chamadas em todo o país. Zamaneh mídia relata que o segundo semestre de 2017 viu um aumento de greves trabalhistas sobre o não pagamento de salários e demissões em massa. Os protestos não se limitam aos trabalhadores industriais, que sofreram o pior de tudo, mas se espalharam para todos os setores de trabalho assalariado. Zamaneh relata as repressões do estado atingem as minorias nacionais mais duramente, assim como os muitos curdos que são mineiros.

Nossa “esquerda” oriental nos assegura quer(a) não há classe de trabalhadora lá, ou (b) que este é apenas o último de uma série de trabalhos da CIA nas massas do Oriente Médio e Norte da África. Estamos aqui para dizer-lhe que existe uma ‘situação pré-revolucionária’ na linguagem do bolchevismo. Condenamos com antecedência qualquer tentativa de impingir uma frente popular sobre as massas iranianas. Eles estão justamente cansados com os líderes que lhes trazem nada além de guerras, pobreza e repressão anti-sindical. Quando uma vez perceberem que essas condições são lançadas sobre eles por uma classe social inimiga, eles também reconhecerão e rejeitarão quaisquer esquemas “a meio caminho”, sejam as frentes populares ou as Assembléias Constituintes, e o estado desse apoio.


(7) As frações reformistas da esquerda e os falsos trotskistas, necessariamente estão expostos e derrotados pela dialética. Se os protestos se  sustentarem e crescerem em uma revolução permanente através da formação de conselhos de trabalhadores, ocupando fábricas etc., e ele realmente começar a lutar pelo poder, podemos esperar que os pró-Assad corram para a defesa do regime, como fizeram na Síria. Estes falsos esquerdistas são tão fixados em sua visão de um mundo unipolar e cegos pelo seu oriental-chauvinismo que todos eles podem ver, sempre que um levante popular nas semi-colônias contra regimes capitalistas despóticos, é ação nefasta da CIA. A falsa esquerda, (na verdade, muito parecido com a Voice of America, que sugere que clérigos linha-dura estão por trás dos protestos!), acredita que o regime pode ser reformado / melhorado. Ou para esta “esquerda”, as próprias pessoas não são capazes de revolução – então elas devem ser as ferramentas de Wall Street. Assim, quando Trump enaltece a revolta, sem nenhum custo político para si mesmo ou sua marca, a falsa esquerda  vê um exército de espiões e provocadores agindo.

O regime lançou uma ofensiva para conter os protestos. Isso pode levá-los à obscuridade, como na Síria, onde milícias armadas surgiram para defender o levante da violenta repressão. Vai ser difícil (não impossível) para a falsa esquerda apresentar os protestos no Irã como trabalho da CIA e / ou radicais islâmicos. É claro que eles vão tentar dizer que é uma “revolução colorida”, ou seja, anti-corrupção, pró-capitalista, mas muitos não vão comprar isso por muito tempo. Eles não podem defender o regime na sua forma mais usual, alegando que o regime é secular e democrático, sendo totalmente apoiados por Erdogan e Putin (embora com cautela, os planos de Putin seja em manter uma aliança com o Irã, independentemente da sua liderança)! Naturalmente as massas iranianas têm pouco tempo para estes ocidentais pequeno-burguês. Colorir esta revolução de VERMELHO!
Chamamos os trabalhadores de todo o mundo a se engajar e participar de ações de trabalhadores em solidariedade com o levante iraniano!


(8) Seguindo o vigoroso patrocinador do governo, canal de notícias RT, declarou as revoltas terem acabado e “como qualquer  violento protesto”, inaceitável. Sombra de Marikana! A falsa esquerda deu ao CNA (Congresso Nacional Africano) um passe livre e nos últimos 6 anos eles têm dado indireto, se não suporte direto, à Assad. Este é o nexo do bloco SCO / BRICS (Organização de Cooperação de Xangai e o bloco  Brasil Rússia, Índia, China, África do Sul), que reunem-se ao emergente bloco imperialista da Rússia / China, com várias semi-colônias capitalistas tentando libertar-se ou permanecerem viáveis, livres do imperialismo norte-americano /União Européia. Assim, junto com aplausos do Fórum Social Mundial / LINKS assemblage, de Chávez presenteando Assad com a espada Bolivariana ao Irã apoiando Assad contra a revolução síria, as classes capitalistas semi-coloniais (Bolivariana, sul africanos e iranianos … ) agem para parar a onda de aspiração revolucionária do proletariado procurando fazer a revolução nacional democrática permanente- isto é, socialista. A esquerda stalinista, com LINKS, os castristas e os falsos trotskistas  do PSL e WWP, optaram por apoiar um bloco imperialista sobre o outro. Cem anos depois de Outubro e eles repetem a traição social-imperialista de agosto de 1914.

O determinante comum da atual onda de protestos é a austeridade devido à crise econômica global que está sendo imposto para as semi-colônias pelas potências imperialistas. Como em toda revolta desde a erupção na Tunísia no início da “Primavera Árabe”, vemos revoltas espontâneas descoordenados  não organizados por qualquer fração burguesa ou influência externa. No Irã, a culpa é dirigida ao regime, não as sanções, etc., daí slogans contrários à intervenção na Síria e Gaza representam um internacionalismo proletário, não uma conspiração da CIA. Isto é evidente na demanda do dirgente do sindicato de professores  que pede o fim do regime (ele foi preso pelo regime durante 5 anos, então não pode ser um fantoche da CIA). Assim, o regime é improvável que seja capaz de enterrar esse levante, tomando a linha que EUA / Israel etc., são os culpados. Daí a defesa do regime pela esquerda imperialista já é exposta como falência! 


Não desprezamos a nossa visão do que precisa ser feito, a saber: 

Por solidariedade internacional dos trabalhadores com as massas iranianas!

Por ações  e greves políticas dos trabalhadores para defender os sindicatos e trabalhadores iranianos!

Abaixo a repressão à mídia social! Retirar todas as acusações e libertar todos os manifestantes presos!

Pela Revolução Permanente no Irã! Acabar com o regime! Esmagar o Estado burguês / clerical!

Formar conselhos operários e milícias, dividir o exército, sem retorno do Xá, unir a revolução com a resistência na Síria e na Palestina!

Abaixo o imperialismo incluindo tanto o bloco dos EUA /UE e do SCO da Rússia e a China! Abaixo os  lacaios burgueses / clericais!

Apoio  internacional dos trabalhadores para reabertura da revolução iraniana juntando-se com a Revolução Árabe! 

Pelo direito de autodeterminação do povo curdo! Por um Curdistão socialista!

Por um partido leninista bolchevique que não ceda a liderança para stalinistas, maoístas, bolivarianos e guevaristas! 
Para um estado dos trabalhadores e camponeses pobres! 

Para uma federação de repúblicas socialistas do Oriente Médio e Norte da África! 


Por uma  nova, revolucionária Internacional dos Trabalhadores, baseada no método e Programa de Transição de Trotsky de 1938 : “Morte agonizante do Capitalismo e as Tarefas da Quarta Internacional”! 



Comitê de Ligação dos Comunistas 8 de fevereiro de 2018 



documentos do Comitê de Ligação dos Comunistas sobre o Irã: 

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1800 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/mena-yemen-and-arab -revolution.html 

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1049 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/defend-iran-against-imperialism-and-its.html 

http: / /redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/defend-iran-against-us-eu-and-israel.html 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/us-and-chinese- imperialismo-mãos-off.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/iran-for-revolutionary-party.html 

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/for-workers-socialist-federation-of .html


RCIT: 

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/long-live-the-popular-uprising-in-iran/


Fontes: 

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/ 01 / ministério de verdade-não-reporte-Irã-protestos / 

https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/spike-in-labor-protests-in-iran-is-changing-the-political-milieu/ 

http: //www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran/overview 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/01/asia-pacific/chinas-investments-iran-surge-coming-western -nations-solha / 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/30/iran-protests-trump-tweets

https://twitter.com/SMohyeddin/status/948505462596603904 

https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/65339/iran-2nd-biggest-fdi-destination-in-mena
Original em http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1967
Traduzido por GTR

Solidarity with the Iranian upsurge! For Permanent Revolution in Iran, the Middle East and North Africa!

(1) The new uprising in Iran is of world-historic significance. It proves that the masses are ready and willing to fight to overthrow capitalism in its death throes. The Iranian workers and poor farmers refuse to pay for the terminal crisis of global capitalism with their lives and their living standards. Marxists understand that this uprising is overdue and can only end in socialist revolution or barbaric counter-revolution. But we are not alone in this historic perspective. An Iranian man, aged 111 years, speaks of being born at the time of Iran’s (then Persia) first step toward bourgeois revolution that took place in 1906. He said “I knew this day would come, I stayed alive for it”. He lived through the whole epoch of imperialism in Iran during during which its national development was held back by the rivalry of the Great Powers, aided by their national bourgeois agents, and the treacherous petty bourgeois ‘democratic’ left, in the contest for control over Eurasia as the key to world domination.

(2) When Lenin wrote “Imperialism; The highest stage of Capitalism” in 1915, Iran’s place in global capitalism was already subordinated to imperialism. Lenin defined imperialism as a system in which imperialist oppressor countries dominated colonial oppressed countries. However a handful of countries were ‘transitional’ or in between which included Persia, China and Turkey. He called these semi-colonies:

"..countries which, formally, are politically independent, but which are, in fact, enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence.”
Just as the Russian revolution proved the theory/program of Permanent Revolution correct, so did Iran’s future development. The constitutional reform of 1906 limited the powers of the Shah but could not escape the “net of financial and diplomatic dependence” without breaking free from British, German and Russian imperialist rivalry for control of Persian oil. Iran’s national revolution was never completed because it was caught in the post WW1 grip of imperialism’s attempts at redivision of the world in the face of international revolutionary upsurge. The Russo-Persian treaty of 1921 protected the Soviet revolution from White incursions from the south while granting shipping rights in the Caspian Sea to Persia. Such was the re-division of the world which removed Russian imperialism from the scene replacing it with the power of the Soviet Union up until Stalin’s deal with the Anglo-American bloc during WW2.

(3) Iran took advantage of the post WW2 redivision and the wave of decolonisation, but like most of the colonies fell short of completing the national democratic (bourgeois) revolution. That succeeded only in China where the capitalists refused the offer to share power with the Maoist CCP and fled to Taiwan, and belatedly in Cuba where the US refused to share power forcing the Castroites into the arms of the Stalinist USSR. In 1951 Mossadegh’s National Front, committed to oil nationalisation, won a parliamentary majority and overturned the absolute power of the constitutional monarchy but failed to go all the way to throw out the national bourgeoisie in a socialist revolution. The result was a hugely popular anti-imperialist bourgeois government that nationalised the oil industry. However, the popular workers and poor farmers movement lacked a revolutionary Bolshevik-Leninist Party capable of breaking the popular front. Mossadegh attempted to negotiate with the imperialists while they imposed production and trade sanctions as well as a naval blockade. US and British agents created divisions in Mossadegh’s support and in 1953 they conspired to stage a coup to restore their ownership and control of Iranian oil and to restore Reza Shah Pahlavi as Constitutional monarch.

The coup attempt failed initially, as the National Front and the Tudeh (Communist Party) took to the streets and the Shah fled to the US. The US and Britain planned a second attempt. This time the coup succeeded mainly because Mossadegh demobilised his mass support and the Stalinist Tudeh party was lulled into the complacency by the apparently victorious popular front which included its rival Islamic movement presaging its reactionary role in 1979. Losing support in parliament, Mossadegh then staged a referendum to dissolve parliament and strip the Shah of his remaining powers; a left constitutional coup which lost him more support. Foreshadowing Allende in Chile in 1973, Mossadegh did not mobilise his support nor call for their resort to arms. All that was needed then was to neutralise Tudeh by infiltrating provocateurs into the party to provoke a ‘communist insurrection’ losing Mossadegh more support, and finally instigating pro-Shah officers under General Zahidi to arrest him and take control of the government.

(4) We summarize our position on the 1979 anti-imperialist revolution and the counter-revolution by the Islamic bourgeoisie of the bazaar:

“The tragedy of the 1979 revolution showed that Iran was ripe for revolution but lacked a revolutionary leadership. The workers and poor peasants were the force behind the anti-Shah revolution, but were led by liberals and Stalinists who allied with the Islamic national bourgeoisie who by 1981 had turned on the most advanced workers and exterminated many thousands of the best militants. The failure of the socialist revolution can be clearly blamed on the role of the Stalinist Tudeh party which followed the fatalist Stalinist line of making a democratic revolution in alliance with the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie to kick out the imperialists. The Stalinists refused to learn from their betrayal of the revolution in China in 1927 when their ‘ally” and honorary member of the Comintern, Chiang Kai Shek, turned on the Communist Party and massacred its leadership.”

Again this serves to demonstrate that unless the workers lead the poor peasants to revolution then the reactionary national bourgeoisie will use its leadership of the anti-imperialist popular front to turn on the workers and oppressed and smash the socialist revolution. The lessons of October have still not been learned. The Stalinists, Guevarists, renegade Trotskyists and Mudjadaheen (Maoists) put their trust in bourgeois democracy rather than the revolutionary workers and poor peasants. Again and again, the workers and poor peasants rise up but lacking a revolutionary Marxist party they are defeated by the reactionary bourgeoisie, serving directly or indirectly the interests of one or other imperialist power.

(5) The Islamic Republic and its near-40 year dictatorship and episodic resistance to it has, up to its present situation as part of the Russia-China bloc, gone to war in the Middle East to re-partition it from Iraq to Lebanon. It is trying to solve its semi-colonial crisis at the expense of lesser semi-colonies and the working peoples of the Middle East and Iran. At least twice now, after the Astana parley and after Sochi, the world has been spun a tale of a Syrian settlement. All that has been settled, from the point of view of the Iranian rulers, is that Syria will have to pay for the intervention in upport of Assad! And meanwhile, the continuous expansionary policy has introduced Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni masses to the behaviors of “volunteers” from the dreaded Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. These not only mete out repressions and steal everything in sight in “liberated” areas, but have their fingers in every sort of economic enterprise wherever they are, all with the blessing of the theocrats.

As a result (as a cartoon on Facebook puts it) Iran is pumping capital and mercenaries into Iraq and Syria and Yemen in a subordinate role to Russia and China, mending its bridges with Turkey and Qatar, and starving its own workers and peasants. So the determinants of the uprising are a history of semi-colonial uneven and combined development and facing a global crisis which creates all the objective conditions for revolution but which still lacks the vital subjective condition of a rolutionary Bolshevik-Leninist Party. With only two alternatives, ultimately, the Iranian masses must find the road to Leninism to be able to carry their revolution through, because the only other alternative is worse reaction than they have experienced to date. 

How the struggle is developing and the two imperialist blocs

(6) We read that ninety percent of Iranians are feeding themselves with the equivalent of food stamps, and that these are slated to be further cut. Where 27% of the Gross Domestic Product was devoted to social welfare and a basic floor akin to the Brazilian Bolsa de Familia for all in 2008, a World Bank study now crows how this has been “reformed” down to 3% today. Youth unemployment is massive, double digit inflation has become a permanent fixture and the government minimum wage is ⅓ of the official ‘minimum necessary income’ for a family of three. This condition prevails as a result of the costs of the theocrats’ wars taking place during a global crisis of capitalism, and especially since Iran has been backing Assad’s counterrevolution with both blood and treasure. An uptick in international investment was supposed to result in improved standard of living conditions, as was the re-election of Rouhani, whom the western press calls a “moderate.” But while the shares of stocks have been sold, nothing got better on the street. In the last month, gasoline prices have doubled. Where Germany and Spain were the big investors after the 2009 protests (over the fake election results), today the money floods in from China: 

“China is financing billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese-led projects in Iran, making deep inroads into the economy while European competitors struggle to find banks willing to fund their ambitions, Iranian government and industry officials said….The Chinese funding, by far the largest statement of investment intent of any country in Iran, is in stark contrast with the drought facing Western investors since U.S. President Donald Trump disavowed the 2015 pact agreed on by major powers, raising the threat sanctions could be reimposed.

Iranian officials say the deals are part of Beijing’s $124 billion Belt and Road initiative, which aims to build new infrastructure — from highways and railways to ports and power plants — between China and Europe to pave the way for an expansion of trade.”

The masses revolt is general and not limited to the largest cities. The Government claim made to the U.K. “Guardian” that the demonstrations have faded is spurious. The revolt combines economic and political demands and calls for the ouster of the theocrats and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei have been taken up across the country. Zamaneh Media reports that the second half of 2017 has seen a spike in labor walkouts over non-payment of wages and mass layoffs. The protests are not limited to the industrial workers, who have suffered the worst of it, but have spread to all wage labor sectors. Zamaneh reports the state repressions have hit national minorities harder, also, such as the many Kurds who are miners.

Our orientalist “left” assures us of either (a) there is no working class there, or (b) that this is just the latest in a string of C.I.A. put-up jobs on the Middle Eastern and North African masses. We’re here to tell you there exists a ‘pre-revolutionary situation’ in the language of Bolshevism. We condemn in advance any attempt to foist a popular front on the Iranian masses. They are rightly sick of the leaders who bring them nothing but wars, poverty and union-busting repressions. When once they realize that these conditions are dumped onto them by an enemy social class, they too will recognize and reject any “half-way” schemes, whether popular fronts or Constituent Assemblies, and the state those support.

(7) Left reformist factions and fake Trotskyists, necessarily are exposed and defeated by dialectics. If the protest movement sustains, and grows over into permanent revolution by forming workers councils, occupying factories etc., and it actually begins to challenge for power, we can expect the pro-Assad left to jump to the defense of the regime as they did in Syria. These faux leftists are so fixated on their unipolar world view and blinded by their western orientalist-chauvinism that all they can see, whenever an angry populous in the semi-colonies rise up against despotic capitalist regimes, is the nefarious hand of the CIA. The faux left, (actually much like the Voice of America, which suggests hardline clerics are behind the protests!), believes the regime can be reformed/ improved. Or this “left”, the people themselves are not capable of revolution--so they must be the tools of Wall St. Thus when Trump lauds the uprising, at no political cost to himself or his brand, the fake left sees an army of spies and provocateurs at work.

The regime has launched an offensive to stop the protests. This may drive them underground as in Syria where armed militias emerged to defend the uprising from violent repression. It will be difficult (not impossible) for the fake left to present the protests in Iran as the work of the CIA and/or Islamic radicals. Of course they will try to say it is a “color revolution,” i.e., an anti-corruption, pro-capitalist one, but not many will buy this for long. They cannot defend the regime in their more usual way, claiming that the regime is secular and democratic, being fully backed by Erdogan and Putin (albeit with caution, Putin’s plans rely on keeping an alliance with Iran irrespective of leadership)! Naturally the Iranian masses have little time for these western petty-bourgeois. Color this revolution RED! We call on workers everywhere to down tools and engage in labor actions in solidarity with the Iranian uprising!

(8) Following the government-sponsored pep rally RT news declared the uprisings to be over and "like any violent protests" unacceptable. Shades of Marikana! The faux left gave the ANC a free pass and for the last 6 years they have given backhanded if not outright support to Assad. This is the nexus of the SCO/BRICS (Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Brazil Russia,India, China, South Africa) bloc which rallied to the emergent Russia/China imperialist bloc the various capitalist semi-colonies trying to break free or remain viable while free from US/EU imperialism. So alongside cheers from the World Social Forum/LINKS assemblage, from Chavez gifting Assad the Bolivarian sword to Iran supporting Assad against the Syrian Revolution, the semi-colonial comprador capitalist classes (Bolivarian, Southern African, and Iranian...) act to stop the wave of proletarian revolutionary aspiration seeking to make the national democratic revolution permanent-- that is, socialist. The Stalinist left alongside LINKS, the Castroists and the faux Trotskyists of the PSL and WWP, have chosen to support one imperialist bloc over the other. A hundred years after October and they repeat the social-imperialist treachery of August, 1914.

The common determinant of the current wave of protests is the austerity due to the global economic crisis being downloaded onto the semi-colonies by the imperialist powers. As in every uprising since the Tunisian eruption at the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” we see spontaneous uncoordinated revolts not organised by any bourgeois faction or outside influence. In Iran, blame is directed at the regime, not sanctions, etc., hence slogans opposing intervention in Syria and Gaza represent a proletarian internationalism, not a CIA plot. This is evident in the demand of the head of teachers union who calls for an end to the regime (he was jailed by the regime for 5 years so cannot be a CIA stooge). So the regime is unlikely to be able to bury this uprising by taking the line that US/Israel etc., are to blame. Hence the imperialist left defence of the regime is already exposed as bankrupt!
We do not disdain to make our view of what needs to be done known:


For international labor solidarity with the Iranian masses!

For labor actions and labor political strikes to defend Iranian trade unionists and workers!

Down with the clampdown on social media! Drop all charges and free all arrested protesters!

For Permanent Revolution in Iran! End the regime! Smash the bourgeois/clerical state!

Set up workers councils and militias, split the army, no return to the Shah, unite the revolution with the resistance in Syria and Palestine!

Down with imperialism including both the U.S./E.U. bloc and the SCO with Russia and China! Down with the bourgeois/clerical lackeys!

International workers' support for reopening of the Iranian revolution joined with the Arab Revolution!

For the right to self-determination for the Kurdish People! For a socialist Kurdistan!

For a Bolshevik Leninist Party that does not cede the leadership to Stalinists, Maoists, Bolivarians and Guevarists!

For a workers and poor farmers state!

For a federation of socialist republics of the Middle and Near East!


For a new, revolutionary Workers’ International, based on the method and Trotsky’s 1938 Transitional Program: “Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”!



Liaison Committee of Communists 8 February, 2018



LCC documents on Iran:

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1800

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/mena-yemen-and-arab-revolution.html

http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=1049

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/defend-iran-against-imperialism-and-its.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2011/11/defend-iran-against-us-eu-and-israel.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/us-and-chinese-imperialism-hands-off.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/iran-for-revolutionary-party.html

http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2015/07/for-workers-socialist-federation-of.html


RCIT:

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/long-live-the-popular-uprising-in-iran/


Sources:

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/01/ministry-truth-no-reporting-iran-protests/

https://en.radiozamaneh.com/articles/spike-in-labor-protests-in-iran-is-changing-the-political-milieu/

http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran/overview

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/12/01/asia-pacific/chinas-investments-iran-surge-coming-western-nations-flounder/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/30/iran-protests-trump-tweets

https://twitter.com/SMohyeddin/status/948505462596603904

https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/65339/iran-2nd-biggest-fdi-destination-in-mena

Hands off Aleppo! Victory to the Syrian Revolution!

While the breaking of the siege of Aleppo is a victory for the revolution, its fate is up in the air because its defence has been weakened by Operation Euphrates Shield which has diverted troops away from its defence. Aleppo is at risk because parts of the FSA (Free Syrian Army) have been redirected to support Turkey’s intervention in the North which has the backing so far of both Russia and U.S. Now the proposed ceasefire is designed to isolate and smash the revolution in Aleppo. 

The primary objective of the U.S. and Russia is to destroy the Syrian revolution which is a force for reviving the Arab Revolution. The war against Islamic State is a mere pretext to destroy the FSA fighters and the YPG fighters and stopping them from creating Arab, Kurd and Turkmen autonomous regions in the North. That, not a tame bourgeois Kurdistan at the beckoning of both the U.S. and Russia, is what the Turkish bourgeoisie fears.

We can see the current developments in the North and the South as evidence that elements of the FSA leadership are selling out the revolutionary fighters in the hope of forming a bourgeois Sunni state that emerges from a repartition of Syria by the Great Powers. It will be a major setback for the revolution if the FSA ranks fall for this class collaboration with U.S. and Russia to divide and rule Syria. 

The only way to defeat the imperialists and all their stooges is for the FSA ranks and YPG (Kurd Peoples’ Protection Units) ranks to throw out their bourgeois commanders and unite their democratic forces to build a revolutionary workers’ federation that allows for ethnic and religious freedom. To back such a front, internationalist workers need to fight their imperialist rulers at home!

Ethnic Cleansing for Partition

In the South the rebel leadership has agreed to evacuating Darayya and transferring the population to Idlib which is under rebel control. The leadership claims its hands were forced as Assad demanded the fighters leave or he would target the civilians.

By itself it could be seen as a tactical withdrawal from an impossible situation. There have been previous evacuations and further evacuations are demanded by Assad. The UN is now backing the plan to create a rebel free territory from Damascus to the sea. We can see the logic behind these deals to remove rebel control from the South to form a geographic area ruled by the existing regime.

In the North the U.S. and Russia have backed the intervention of Turkey to fight ISIS and YPG alongside FSA factions. The U.S. however opposes Turkey’s intervention extending to ethnically cleanse Kurds from Syria (East of the Euphrates). The interests of Turkey and the U.S. will collide here. Turkey wants the military allies of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) to be expelled from Syria, whereas the U.S. wants the Syrian Kurds (YPG led-Syrian Democratic Front-SDF) to form part of a Kurdistan client state in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey is the wild card here because its main interest is to prevent any Kurd nation that could lead to secession of the predominantly Kurdish regions of South East Turkey. This interest it shares with Russia and China and their local proxies, Iran and Iraq. Turkey is already offside with the U.S. because Erdogan blames it for supporting the coup attempt. So either the U.S. is prepared to give up its plan to create a larger Kurdistan, or Turkey is going to move away from the U.S. and NATO further into the arms of Russia and China.

From the standpoint of the revolution any capitulation to any imperialist power is a serious setback. The FSA has long been pulled in the direction of using its militias as bargaining chips to negotiate a peace. We have opposed all these negotiations as futile and defended those in the FSA leadership that reject any deal with the Assad regime. Now we hear that in the South rebels who refuse to give in to Assad are being ordered to stop fighting and evacuate. At the same time FSA elements are collaborating with Turkey against the SDF.

Our position is that the FSA is in danger of compromising with imperialism while fighting alongside Turkey to defeat the US backed SDF which has recently attacked FSA positions in an attempt to create an autonomous Kurdish state in Northern Syria. We have always supported Kurdish national rights but not as part of a deal with imperialism to attack the Syrian revolution as we saw when the SDF joined Assad’s siege of Aleppo. However, if the FSA response is part of a military bloc with Turkey and Russia against the U.S. backed SDF then revolutionaries cannot be part of this imperialist military bloc any more than we can support an imperialist ceasefire.

Unlike most of the fake anti-imperialists in the West, we do not see the role of the U.S. bloc and Russia/China bloc in the Syrian revolutionary war as progressive on either side. To understand why the two imperialist blocs are fighting in Syria we need to understand its significance as a geopolitical hotspot contested by both blocs. 

Syria: Geopolitical Hotspot

Against much of the left, we regard Russia and China as imperialist powers that have formed a bloc with a number of semi-colonies such as Brazil, India and South Africa. This bloc also includes Iran and the current Iraqi regime. While often labelled ‘emerging’ powers, in our view Russia and China have emerged in the last 20 years as new imperialist powers. As such they dominate and oppress the semi-colonies in their bloc just as the U.S. bloc includes a number of imperialist powers that dominate and oppress the semi-colonies in their bloc.

The U.S./NATO bloc includes all the European imperialist powers in its ‘coalition’ to “defeat ISIS”. It also includes its local allies, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Despite much speculation that the US includes Iran, Turkey and Egypt it its bloc, the truth is that Iran is closely linked to the Russia/China bloc. Turkey has been denied entry to the EU and is currently on a course towards the Russia/China bloc. Egypt, long a U.S. client state, is under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi negotiating a free-trade pact between Egypt and the Eurasian Economic Union, comprising Russia and several ex-Soviet states.

The Russia/China bloc has strengthened during the period of the war. The U.S. position was originally to remove Assad and find a ‘democratic’ alternative but it held back from active intervention along the lines of Libya. However, the resistance to Assad refused to capitulate to a new pro-U.S. leadership and has fought Assad to a standstill.

The two main facts about the resistance are that first, it is not significantly funded by the U.S. or its proxies. They are Syrian fighters many of whom defected from the Syrian army, not foreign ‘terrorists’. The ‘terrorists’ are the Assad regime and all the foreign mercenaries from Hezbollah to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Moreover, the U.S. blocked the provision of Surface to Air Missiles (SAMS) to the rebels fearing a revolution that would not stop at overthrowing Assad but spark an armed Arab uprising from Tunisia to Bahrain to kick out imperialism and its dictators.

Second, the resistance has become strengthened by Islamic currents such as al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) designated by Russia and the U.S. as ‘terrorists’ because they want an ‘Islamic State’. Yet this is a state defined by Fateh al-Sham as a non-sectarian Islamic republic. It is because the revolution is an authentically Syrian national democratic revolution against imperialism that it continues to win popular support and control large areas of the country refusing to sign a cease-fire deal that would allow Assad to stay in power.

That is why in mid 2015 Russia intervened militarily to break the back of the popular revolution in defence of its Syrian ally, and the U.S. has been forced to collaborate with it against both the ISIS and against the revolution. Unlike the Russians who have their own troops on the ground, plus major foreign forces such as Hezbollah, the Iranian national guards, and the Iraqi Shiite militias to name the most important, the U.S. bloc has few troops on the ground other than the proxy PYG led SDF. The Russian bloc has seized the advantage and stolen a march on the US bloc forcing it to collaborate in a fight that benefits Russia and its allies but poses big risks for the US bloc.

The U.S. has already acquiesced in a deal with Iran and accepts Iran’s control of the Iraqi regime. The U.S. has now publicly accepted that Assad can stay for now. But this agreement lasts only so long as the two parties can agree on who is a “terrorist”. As we have seen the current collaboration between the two blocs to defeat all “terrorists” may breakdown over the question of whether or not the Kurds are defined as “terrorists”. Russia has changed its position from regarding the Kurds as allies of Assad, to that of ‘terrorists’. The big question is will the U.S. pull back from its goal of a Kurd nation in Syria and Iraq, or pursue it in a trade off for the partition of Syria and Iraq to rewrite the Sykes/Picot ‘agreement’ with a new Kerry/Lavrov ‘agreement’ to repartition the Middle East between the two imperialist blocs?

For those ‘Trotskyists’ who reject the position that Russia and China are imperialists we ask how do they explain the role of Russia in the Syrian war? Is Putin no more than Obama’s “hitman”. To argue as the FLTI does that Russia is a sub-imperialist power (a state that is more than a semi-colony but less then imperialist), along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, cannot account for the advances made against US interests in the Middle East which favour Russia. Can a sub-imperialist Russia advance its bloc’s interests in the region (boosting Iran in Iraq and Syria, pulling Turkey away from NATO towards Russia, with China joining in training Assad’s troops, and India affirming the legitimacy of Assad’s regime) without significantly limiting US hegemony as a rival imperialist power?

For real Marxists, Leninists, and Trotskyists, this can only mean that the rivalry between the two big imperialist blocs today is a continuation of the ‘Great Game’ between Britain and Russia for control of Eurasia before the First Imperialist War of 1914-1918. If the imperialists are allowed to win, to smash the Syrian and Arab revolutions and force a re-partition of the Middle East along the Kerry-Lavrov proposals, then this will be a defeat for the world revolution as a result of more bloody wars and even a Third (and last) World War.

Epoch, Crisis, War and Revolution

The geopolitical stakes are high in Syria because the success of the revolution represents a victory for the Arab and World revolution. Alternatively if the revolution is defeated by imperialism and its client states, this would be a major setback for the Arab and World revolution. Of course for that to happen it must be over the dead body of the Syrian Revolution. This forces all those who profess to be revolutionaries to come out in defence of the Syrian Revolution and provide material aid on all four major fronts:

· (1) recognising that the regime is fascist and must be overthrown and not appeased by fake imperialist deals including ceasefires and/or the partition of Syria;

· (2) opposing the bourgeois factions masquerading as the FSA leadership against the revolution and replacing this leadership with those fighters committed to defeating Assad and all the imperialist interventions in Syria;

· (3) fighting the jihadists who want to usurp the national rights of Syrians, Iraqis and Kurds to form a reactionary bourgeois Islamic State;

· (4) exposing and defeating the fake left that sides directly or indirectly with the Assad regime and/or with Russian imperialism as defending ‘democracy’ against ‘terrorism’.

There is no question that for revolutionaries the fate of the Syrian Revolution is a fundamental test of their politics and program. What is at stake is the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Those who claim to be Trotskyists have to step up and put their program to the test so workers can recognise who are revolutionaries and who are treacherous enemies of the revolution. Who is for or against Permanent Revolution? What do we mean by permanent revolution?

The short definition of Permanent Revolution is that the bourgeois democratic revolution cannot be completed except as a socialist revolution. Hence the bourgeois democratic revolution does not represent a stage necessary to prepare for socialism. The national democratic revolution becomes a continuous, uninterrupted, and hence permanent revolution until it becomes an international socialist revolution.

How do Trotskyists advance the national democratic revolution (Arab Revolution) by means of Permanent Revolution? We base ourselves on the transitional method (dialectics) and the Transitional Program (Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International). Without an internationalist Trotskyist Leninist party there is no revolutionary leadership and no testing of revolutionary theory in the struggle. This situation was summed up by Trotsky in the 1930s as the “crisis of revolutionary leadership”! Today this crisis is that of the failure of the 4th International to build a revolutionary international party.

What we prize is the legacy of Bolshevism, Leninism and Trotskyism, embodied in Trotsky’s method and program up to 1940. We begin with our understanding that we are still living in the epoch of imperialism, the epoch of crises, wars and revolutions. Capitalism is objectively overripe for revolution, lacking only a class conscious proletariat to lead the socialist revolution to victory.

Today after successive crises, wars and revolutions in the 20th century which marked capitalism’s continuing decline, all previous revolutions have succumbed to counter-revolution due to the crisis of leadership. We face a current situation in which global capitalism faces its terminal crisis. Unless we build a new communist international first, this crisis will mean the end not only of capitalism but also of human civilisation.

In response to this crisis the Arab Spring in 2011 represented the refusal of the Arab masses to pay for capitalism’s terminal crisis. The reopening of the national democratic revolution in MENA included the Syrian uprising and the five year long revolutionary war. The Syrian revolutionary war is the advance guard of the Arab Revolution. That is why we insist that it is a definitive test of all those who claim to lead workers to socialist revolution.

This revolution exposes all those self-proclaimed Marxists, Leninists, and Trotskyists who fail this test and objectively end up in the trenches of the class enemy. They can be categorised roughly into two groups. Those who support Assad as an anti-imperialist when he is a stooge of both U.S. and Russian imperialism, and those who reject Assad as anti-imperialist but fall into the Menshevik dogma that Arab workers as not ready for socialism and must fighting alongside the national bourgeoisie to complete the national democratic revolution to prepare the conditions for socialist revolution.

In the first group are the Blind Assadists who regard the workers as ‘not ready’ for even the struggle for bourgeois democracy because they have been replaced by imperialist backed jihadists. They blatantly deny the existence of a popular national revolution in Syria. The most influential are those who say that the ‘rebels’ are no different to the ‘jihadists’ funded by U.S. proxies, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, etc. Hence they draw the conclusion that the Assad regime is waging a just anti-imperialist war against US imperialist proxies. These Blind Assadists include the cryptostalinist RT socialists who back ‘anti-imperialist’ Russia defending the Assad regime against the US-backed ‘rebels'.

In the second category are the Unconscious Assadists; those who recognise and support the Syrian revolution but do not see the working class as capable of socialist revolution without first exhausting the limits of bourgeois democracy. This grouping includes Mensheviks, Maoists and Trotskyist centrists, though their positions are far from identical. The Menshevik/Maoist view is that in the epoch of imperialist decay the bourgeois national democratic revolution must be completed before socialist revolution is possible. A good example is the US organisation Communist Voice.

Joseph Green of Communist Voice rails against Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution as denigrating the struggle for bourgeois democracy. Yet Trotsky did not reject bourgeois democratic demands such as the right to national self-determination, merely by rebranding them ‘transitional demands’. He rejected the Menshevik division between the ‘minimum’ and ‘maximum’ program as substituting a pre-ordained stageism for the dialectics of workers taking the fight for immediate democratic demands that would be met inevitably by imperialist repression, all the way to the socialist insurrection. We will see below whether it is Leon Trotsky or Joseph Green who is right in the case of the Syrian Revolution.

For Permanent Revolution!

Our task is to expose those who reject or revise Permanent Revolution. For us there can be no stage in the national democratic revolution where fighting for bourgeois democracy dictates in advance the defence of bourgeois parliament. For the proletariat, the defence of bourgeois democracy is justified only when it advances the socialist revolution. Whether or not workers defend bourgeois parliament is a tactical question that depends on the balance of class forces, that is, the advance or retreat of the revolution.

Where the revolution is thrown back or has been defeated as in China in 1927 the retreat to bourgeois parliament becomes a tactic to rally the proletarian forces to prevent the closing of the road to revolution. When the revolution is advancing or where the proletariat has not been defeated, as in the Russian Revolution in 1917, Permanent Revolution requires the raising of revolutionary demands of workers power, insurrection and the overthrow of the bourgeois state including the disbanding of the bourgeois Constituent Assembly.

In Syria after 5 years of civil war where the armed revolution is in control of large parts of Syria, the revolution has not been defeated. Against all that U.S. and Russian imperialism and their proxies can throw at it, the revolution survives. Do we call for a peace deal with imperialism to partition Syria that betrays that revolution? No! Already the revolution has built new institutions based on popular democracy to administer the territory it occupies.

In other words here is the Permanent Revolution in the flesh. To defend the immediate bourgeois rights to live and of freedom of expression, workers, poor farmers, street vendors etc., have created workers rights through their armed struggle against “democratic” imperialism and their Syrian dictator Assad!

These are not institutions of bourgeois democracy but of workers’ democracy. They are the result of proto workers communes that if joined up would be the basis for an embryonic workers’ state. We do not defend the gains made, or respect the loss of life in the revolution so far, by retreating to even the most advanced bourgeois democracy, the ‘constituent assembly’. In Syria voting for bourgeois rights has been replaced by taking them arms in hand against the bombs and mercenaries of self-proclaimed ‘democratic’ imperialism. That is why our program in Syria is not for a Constituent Assembly but armed workers soviets everywhere!

The situation is critical. Aleppo is our Paris Commune. But we cannot win if the revolution is co-opted by one or other imperialism and their client states in the region. At the moment part of the FSA leadership is collaborating with Turkey while the YPG leadership is collaborating with the U.S. These rebel forces have been co-opted by Turkey under agreement of both Russia and the U.S. to remove the IS and the YPG from northern Syria. The planned outcome is a divided Syria along the lines of Russia/Assad/Iran regime in the West and U.S./Jordan/Saudi regime in the East.

The survival of the Syrian revolution for 5 years has forced the hand of both imperialist blocs to engage in a new redivision of MENA that reflects the geopolitical confrontation between the two rival blocs. While they are currently collaborating in smashing both the Arab and Kurd revolutions by dividing them and buying off their leaderships, these popular revolutions can defeat both imperialism and its client dictators by turning the tables in the war.

To do this we have to fight the Arab and Kurd national revolutions as one workers’ revolution. This is about class not nation. Turkey is carrying the can for U.S. and Russia to divide and defeat the workers’ revolution and create stable pro-imperialist statelets ruled by their bourgeois clients. There can be no victorious bourgeois national revolution anymore unless it is a permanent or socialist revolution. And socialist revolution in one country cannot survive unless it is international.

That is why the Arab and Kurd national revolutions cannot succeed unless the workers and peasants who do the fighting split decisively from their treacherous bourgeois and petty bourgeois class leaders and join forces with workers and peasants of the whole MENA. It is necessary for the ranks of the rebels to throw out the FSA and YPG leaders who are collaborating with the U.S. and Russia. It is necessary for Iraqi, Egyptian, Palestinian, Kurd, and Iranian workers and peasants to take the lead in their own national revolutions against imperialism, and turn them into victorious socialist revolutions.

They must reject the partition of Syria, Kurdistan and Iraq along sectarian lines, and fight for unity along working class lines. We must appeal to Turkish workers to reject Erdogan’s deals with Russia and the U.S. and join forces with the Arab and Kurd masses. We must oppose a new Sykes/Picot in the form of a Kerry/Lavrov deal and fight for a victorious Arab revolution hand in hand with a Kurd Revolution. If the FSA and PYG stopped fighting one another over who controls north Syria and formed a revolutionary bloc, they could unite not only all Arabs in Syria, Iraq and Palestine, but the whole of MENA against the deals being made by Russia and the U.S. to divide and defeat these two revolutions.

We want a permanent revolution in which the Arab workers and peasants unite across the whole of MENA to form non-sectarian, democratic, socialist republics in a socialist federation with the Kurd and Iranian revolutions.

Workers internationally must join this revolution, not only in MENA but also in their own countries. We have to fight on the four fronts internationally. Since it is clear that the Syrian and Kurd revolutions would have already succeeded without the intervention of imperialism and its client dictators, our main task, especially in the imperialist countries, is to defeat imperialism at home! The U.S./NATO bloc would be immobilised by militant working class opposition to imperialism at home. Russia and China would be immobilised by their own workers and peasants rising up to overthrow their imperialist regimes.

The world is on the brink of disaster. Facing its terminal crisis, capitalism can only survive by killing workers everywhere and destroying the ecosphere. For workers to survive, capitalism must die. Workers can do this only by organising internationally across the defunct borders of the bourgeois nation state; by arming themselves to defend their class against capitalist counter-revolution; by using their armed class power to overthrow and replace dying capitalism with a new socialist system.

This revolution has begun in Syria. We are at the crossroads; take the right fork and the revolution will be defeated and make the demise of our species that much harder to stop, take the left fork, it becomes a call to arms for workers everywhere to fight for socialism and the survival of our species.